


The Appointment in the Sea of Japan

by telemain



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 15:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7939753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemain/pseuds/telemain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways Henry Blake cheated fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Appointment in the Sea of Japan

_Radar, put a mask on!_

_If that's my discharge, give it to me straight, I can take it._

_I have a message._

**Universe 1**

"I know I missed my flight, son, just please get me on the first one you can." Blake groaned and leaned on the wall. The rustle of his travel orders in the young corporal's hand were almost more than Blake and his hangover could bear. He didn't remember a great deal of the last two days, but he knew that he'd taken his last drink. He wouldn't need it anymore after he got home. He- 

"You're the luckiest son of a bitch in this man's army, pardon my language sir." 

"Damn right I am. I'm headed home." 

"Not just that, sir." 

When Blake heard what had happened to the flight he should have been on, he decided he would have at least one more drink before leaving Korea. 

_Lieutenant Colonel_

**Universe 2**

The plane hit the water almost gently. Blake threw up again. It had been a hell of a wild ride after the jolt had shaken him awake, but somehow the pilot had managed to keep the nose up and glide to a level landing instead of spinning in. "Unstrap! Now! Everyone up and out!" 

It was four cold and wet hours in the raft before they were picked up. The pilot - burnt and blinded - died two hours in, and Henry Blake could only hold his hand and watch. 

_Henry Blake's plane_

**Universe 3**

Somewhere over the Pacific, his mind wandered to when he'd first got that transfer to Tokyo, and Hawkeye and Trapper had followed him there with some wild story about Radar being sick to try to get him back to the 4077th. He'd put in for it, but had been denied; the Army needed him at Tokyo General, and wasn't about to hear any arguments. 

It wasn't until after he landed in San Francisco that he put two-and-two together about the plane that'd been shot down between Seoul and Tokyo right before he'd left for home, and wondered if he could take a train to Illinois instead. 

_was shot down_

**Universe 4**

"Radar, are you just trying to keep me here another day?"

"No, Colonel, honest no. Leave early if you have to. Just don't be on the plane you're supposed to be on. Bad things is gonna happen."

Not long afterwards, Radar lost his ESP or his knack or whatever you want to call it. But Henry Blake was alive and safe in Bloomington, just a couple hundred miles from Ottumwa. That was what mattered. 

_over the Sea of Japan._

**Universe 5**

The big man with a shock of sandy blond hair and an aw-shucks grin on an honest face leans back in his chair. He looks more like Wayne Rogers than Gary Burghoff, but he is Walter O'Reilly, though he's asked the interviewer not to call him 'Radar'. "The least favorite thing of mine that happened on that TV show about us was how they killed Henry on his way home. That weren't fair." 

"One could maybe say that war isn't fair and that's how they brought that home to the audience." 

"Well sure, we all knew that. I mean, heck, that whole show was about that. But it weren't right -- I mean, it weren't true. Henry made it home safe. It was Frank Burns what got killed over there. I guess they figured the folks at home liked Henry more. " 

_It spun in._

**Universe 0**

The words of strangers instead of her husband's voice. "Mrs. Blake? The Secretary of Defense deeply regrets to inform you..." 

A small hard piece of metal, gold and purple, in her hand, instead of her husband's hand. "FOR MILITARY MERIT."

An empty bed, a dark room, a house full of memories. Death, instead of life. 

_There weren't no survivors._

**Epilogue**

It was Colonel Margaret Houlihan who was the first to know. In June of 1962, with brand-new silver birds still shiny on her shoulders, she found herself passing through Peoria, Illinois, just down the road from Bloomington, and decided to take a small detour. 

Finding the town cemetery, she called over the caretaker, and told him she was looking for Henry Blake. He gave her a confused look. She explained that he had been her commanding officer, in Korea.

"Oh sure, that MASH unit, he talks about it all the time. You must be "Hot Lips" Houlihan." 

"He... he talks... ?" 

"Yeah, all these outlandish stories. His office is gotta be closed by now, but you can probably find him holding after-office hours at Sean's Pub off Emerson near the University."

And then he yells after her, "And why were you looking for him in the boneyard anyway?"


End file.
